Now that we’re substantially into the semester, and the sting of getting the boot from that first-choice class has subsided, it’s time to look back and rant on the confusion that is add/drop. We come to Amherst for one main reason: the academics. Our school provides the best teachers and they teach the best classes, so we agree to pay huge sums of money, time, energy and hard work. Why, then, semester after semester, are we subjected to a system that is not only inefficient, but also keeps us from taking those classes and learning from those very teachers that we chose this school for?
It’s 3 a.m. at Amherst. The usual pile of left-behind work is precariously piled atop a desk as you loll around drowsily on your bed, your head urging you to work but your body refusing to oblige. Silence pervades the air. Only the faint tick-tock of the alarm clock can be heard, teasing you as the minutes wilt into yesterday. Closing your eyes, the heavy monotony of the late hour persuades you to go sleep. Just as you drift off into unconsciousness, a low, disturbing rumble erupts, making a sound akin to a very disgruntled moose.
I had exactly five tabs open on Google Chrome when I wrote this rant. The first tab was Grooveshark, my main source for finding and listening to music. The second was for my email, which I need to check constantly for class and which basically accounts for half of my contact with the world outside of Amherst. The other half is taken care of by the third tab, Facebook. Facebook functions as my only social life during times when I’m stressed or just too busy to leave my room and face the sunlight.
You can tell a lot about a person by the subsections they divide their time into when asked to sum up their lives. Time spent sleeping versus time spent awake, time spent exercising versus time spent relaxing, time spent thinking about that boy or girl you like versus, well, nothing. But for the typical Amherst student, the distinction that we make is pretty clear. It is study time versus literally everything else we do in our lives. That’s a pretty fair representation of what life here is.
